


and we could be enough.

by songofthestars



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/M, Not Underage, Post-Mockingjay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-27
Updated: 2017-04-27
Packaged: 2018-10-24 17:56:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10746858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/songofthestars/pseuds/songofthestars
Summary: He doesn't know exactly how it begins.[...] Haymitch is never going to stop drinking, not entirely, Katniss is going to have her scars and nightmares, and it's obvious – people are not medicines. But they have each other, and that's enough.





	and we could be enough.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thinkofaugust](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thinkofaugust/gifts).



> Hi to everyone! This is the first time I post a fic on this site. English is not my first language, so if you notice any mistakes, tell me - I'll correct them at once. I had this little idea popping up in my mind after rewatching the movies, and so... here it is. It is not a masterpiece, but I hope you Hayniss fans enjoy it.

He doesn't know exactly how it begins.

The ashes of district 12 still poison the air, and he knows that it will never be the same. Not after the Games, not after Snow, not after the bombs.

And neither will she. 

She is a mangled mess of burns and wrecks, but mostly within, where no one can see. Haymitch knows that Peeta will come back totally changed from his treatment into the old capital – if he ever comes back. The girl on fire is no longer flames and fury, just the mirage of a long–gone child, a caress she will never have, a voice she will never hear again. 

His eardrums bleed at the sound of her screams and cries – they are neighbours, he can hear her, _God,_ it's impossible not to hear her – and he can imagine her in Prim's room, where once there was a filled bed. Now it's untouched, a relic.

Haymitch puts down the umpteenth bottle of shoddy gin and his fingers brush against the receiver. It would just take a call, but he knows he doesn't have the guts. That she would not answer. He pictures her grey eyes, so similar to his own, puffed up with tears, and words fall from his lips like broken teeth. It's suffocating. What is he supposed to say? _I'm here, sweetheart, you're not alone_ – but no. This is a different kind of games, a different kind of survival, and one is always alone.

 

She's the first to move. She walks in his home, around midday, her hair tangled and her skin deathly pale. She grabs the first bottle she finds and sits down on the sofa across from him. 

Startled, he blinks and looks at her like she is some kind of a rare vision.

“It's useless to say that I'm sorry, you know that, sweetheart.”

Katniss gags on the alcohol. “Don't say anything.” He knows that part of her body is deformed by the burns, but also that that is the lesser evil. He knows she hasn't gone out for weeks, and that the old Greasy Sae forces her to dress herself, to shower, to eat. If she wasn't there for her, Katniss would be already dead.

Haymitch looks at her drinking the bottle down and falling asleep on his sofa, while he sips his gin. In the end, he collapses too.

 

He almost falls off the couch when he hears her sobbing and screaming in her sleep: she mumbles nonsensical words, a desperate cry that rips her lungs and the chords of her heart apart. _Prim, Prim, Prim._

In the first instant, he doesn't know what to do; then he hurries up and grabs her shoulders, keeping her from biting down the pillow. She holds onto him like he is an anchor, presses her face to his chest and stifles her tears while he smoothes her hair. 

“You're safe now. It's alright. Let it all out. It's the only thing.”

Katniss follows his advice, wiping her nose off her jacket's sleeve. She steps away from him, caught off guard by her own hasty actions, and she stays watching her interlaced fingers on her lap, maybe a little ashamed.

“Sorry” she says at last, biting down her lip.

Haymitch shakes his head, craving another sip of gin more than ever. "You're welcome."

“I was –”

“You don't need to tell me what you were dreaming. I already know.”

Katniss snorts lightly. “I was right when I said to…” she swallows hard at that name, "… to Finnick that I was an open book.”

 _To me you are, sweetheart._ But this, he doesn't say.

 

After Katniss pukes her guts from all the alcohol – she is not used to it like he is – Haymitch gives her his bathroom and a pair of old sweatpants, of a size conspicuously too big for her body, but it doesn't matter. They sit together on the sofa and pretend to watch TV. Haymitch knows that she has been living out of the world for a while; reality was too painful for her to move her legs with ease, and so she took shelter in her memories, pleasant or not. She ends up falling asleep again, her head pressed against his shoulder. Haymitch doesn't dare to make a single move, afraid to wake her up.

 

“What the _hell_ are you doing?” 

Katniss slips out of her sweater, staying with only her underwear on – not that she has ever shown modesty with him, but – and gestures him to follow her. He gives in, even just because it's the first time she has taken the initiative to do something – whatever it is – for months. 

“You'll catch a cold like that.”

“Don't play the anxious parent. It's not believable.”

She walks towards the mirror in his bathroom and she looks at herself – her scarred body, worn down like a mountain by the weather – almost with curiosity, and then with little nostalgia for the innocence she has lost forever.

“I'm a monster, aren't I?”

Haymitch knows that she isn't referring to her exterior.

“You're human, sweetheart. And a survivor.”

She nods, putting on her sweater with slow, aching movements. She doesn't ask if she can sleep there with him. She takes possession of his sofa and he sits at her feet, a blanket to warm them both. The next morning she is already gone, and Haymitch realizes that he hasn't had a drink for hours.

 

She's always the first to sneak into his home, silent as a cat. He consoles her during her nightmares and she also – she also helps him when he wakes up with his heart racing and the arena in his mind. He notices that she avoids drinking more than one or two shot a day – and it's a luck. He doesn't want her to become something she is not. He doesn't want her to become like him.

But maybe she already is. They have always been too similar, two fires ready to blaze. It's just a matter of time before they collide and explode.

 

Haymitch lets her curl up into his bed, beside him, at night, when their demons are harder to fight. She cries and grinds her teeth and screams in her sleep, but she feels better, later. And he continues to not overindulge in alcohol, not like he used to do, because he knows that if he did, he could not take care of her. He remembers the determined girl she used to be and now he has to deal with her remains: the fire has turned to ash, but that doesn't mean it doesn't burn. She reminds him of all the women in his life, tough and strong in a different way from each other, and turned to embers. 

“Can I stay here?” she asks him one night. She is curled up like a cat under the sheets, and he, laying on his back next to her, tries to forget the warmth coming from her body, making that bed too cramped. _You're a drunken fool and a jerk, but I didn't think you were a pervert_ – he can almost hear Katniss' caustic voice in his ears.

“As long as you want, sweetheart.”

The girl that was on fire takes him by his word and doesn't go away. For once, he has nothing to complain about.

 

Haymitch notices that she smiles again, sometimes, when he scrapes together some biting comment and Katniss comes up with a retort – like they used to do, it's how they communicate. They realize they know each other better than anyone else. They spend their days in a peaceful silence, or bickering without real poison in their words, or watching TV and following the developments of the brand new nation they contributed to build – she rests her head on his shoulder, her breathing checked. And Haymitch has never felt so in peace for… well, twenty five years, he supposes. He also knows it's wrong, that he shouldn't fall into the trap and learn to love that smile and those dimples and her tangled hair, but he can't help it. He curses himself inwardly while he watches her sleep on his chest. _Damn it, Haymitch Abernathy. Better a hangover than… this._

 

“Do they ever end? The nightmares, I mean.”

“No, sweetheart. Not really.”

 

After months, slowly, Katniss puts on again her father's jacket and urges him to follow her into the woods, where she teaches him how to hunt – Haymitch has a knack for knives, but he finds out he's not suited for bow and arrow – and from that moment, game is always ready on the table. Maybe it's his imagination, but her cheeks flush red when she holds him to teach him the best way to shoot an arrow. 

Haymitch complains about the cold and the insects and the lack of alcohol, but she just smiles at him and knows that he will follow her – damn, he would follow her at the end of the world, and even there he would know the scent of her skin, the tone of her voice, everywhere.

He's screwed, isn't he?

 

She's the first to kiss him. They are sitting on the steps of his home – not far away from hers – when he makes an inappropriate and casual remark about the lack of rum and she laughs and pull his dark hair back. They look at each other for a moment, tension building between them like a pulsating sun – it's not unpleasant, though. She rubs her nose against his.

“Hi.”

“Hi, sweetheart.”

And she kisses him.

 

Haymitch doesn't know how much it's going to last. He has never believed to “forevers” – not after the Games, not after Snow, not after everything. And he knows that it's the same for Katniss. But when he watches her holding onto him, naked under the sheets, and smiling lightly in her sleep, he thinks that maybe they can build something, if they work hard. 

Together.

Haymitch is never going to stop drinking, not entirely, Katniss is going to have her scars and nightmares, and it's obvious – people are not medicines. But they have each other, and that's enough.

For once, that's enough.


End file.
